Interactive example-based urban layout synthesis

Abstract

We present an interactive system for synthesizing urban layouts by example. Our method simultaneously performs both a structurebased synthesis and an image-based synthesis to generate a complete urban layout with a plausible street network and with aerial-view imagery. Our approach uses the structure and image data of real-world urban areas and a synthesis algorithm to provide several high-level operations to easily and interactively generate complex layouts by example. The user can create new urban layouts by a sequence of operations such as join, expand, and blend without being concerned about low-level structural details. Further, the ability to blend example urban layout fragments provides a powerful way to generate new synthetic content. We demonstrate our system by creating urban layouts using example fragments from several real-world cities, each ranging from hundreds to thousands of city blocks and parcels. © 2008 ACM.